It would be safe to assume that Wade Phillips doesn't spend an inordinate amount of time debating his job security; if he did, he would have been carted off the the mad-house by now.
In an interesting post on the Dallas Morning News website, Phillips discusses his approach to coaching in what, fairly unanimously, is viewed as the most visible market in the NFL; and, surprise surprise, Wade isn't exactly boiling over with stress, as he keeps in mind a coaching truism passed down from his father, coaching legend Bum Phillips: there are two kinds of coaches. Those who have been fired and those who are about to be fired.
This has held true for Phillips, who has been on the hot seat intermittently, basically, since the playoff loss to New York in 2007, and more permanently, obviously, this season, after a nearly unthinkable collapse sent Dallas home with a "Participant" ribbon in 2008. In his third season, Phillips has spent most of his time in Dallas in the "hot seat," to some degree or another.
Indeed, Phillips' sanity, in the face of such tireless scrutiny, is proof in itself of such a grounded mindset.
"That's the way I've always coached," Phillips said in the News. "Way back (in Denver), when we were 10-6, 10-6, 11-5 and went to two AFC Championship Games and we got fired, I realized that 'hey, you can do a great job and for whatever reason, you can be gone.' So I stopped worrying about all that and worry about coaching, trying to do the best I can do to help the team win.
"That's all I really think about."
